Monday, February 26, 2007

Signing Bonuses...

With the recent downward spiral in sign-on bonuses for Taiwanese HS kids joining MLB clubs, I was surprised when the Anaheim Angels inked the top Korean HS kid - Young-Il Jung with a $1 million sign on bonus. Baseball America then promptly named the kid the #4 prospect in the entire system. Granted, the kid is talented - (maxes out at 93 mph), however I'm not quite sure if pure physical talent is the only reason why the Angels shelled out so much $$$ for his services.

Cracking the Korean market is tough, as Shin-Soo Choo and Jae-Kuk Ryu are two of the more recent successful kids to make the jump to the US from HS. If you combine the past string of Korean HS kids who didn't pan out in the US with the fact that the KBO does a good job of holding on to young domestic talent, you can see why the signings from Korea have been more infrequent recently. With that said, the Angels were probably able to steal Jung away from the KBO by inking their 2006 first round draft pick - Hank Conger who is Korean-American. Also it doesn't hurt that Southern Cal has a huge Korean-American population who come out in full force to support their roots - ie the World Baseball Classic, World Cup appearances, Chan Ho Park when he was a Dodger. Hopefully we continue to see more signings from South Korea in the future.

With that said, the last HS kid from Taiwan to receive a 7 figure sign-on bonus was Ching-Lung Lo in 2001 ($1.4 million). Lo's upside as a 16 year old and the fact that he stood 6'4" and threw in the low 90's justified his sign-on bonus. The only other 2 HS kids from Taiwan to receive more were Chin-Hui Tsao with $2.2 million in 1999 and Hong-Chih Kuo with $1.25 million also in 1999. The next kid down the list is Chia-An Huang who was signed for $710,000 in 2004. Huang's reputation as an 18 year old mirror the same descriptions for Young-Il Jung - a top young power right handed pitcher.

What does this tell us? Well, for one it's obvious that there's a big drop-off in talent after all the big names signed in 1999 - 2001. After 2001, the top HS pitcher to come out of Taiwan (and to the US) has been Chia- An Huang. The top hitting HS prospect to come out of Taiwan (and to the US) has been Chih-Hsien Chiang. As good as these 2 kids are, the current trend has seen a shift of the most talented Taiwanese HS kids going to HS in Japan and receiving hefty signing bonuses.

The post 2001 signings have seen MLB take a chance on "developing players" out of Taiwan while the NPB has shown an interest in players that are polished and ready - top young prospects like those listed above and the cream of the crop in the CPBL:

6 comments:

Cor
said...

The NT will come to Holland again for a tournament.This time in Rotterdam where they will be competing with Cuba, Japan, Holland and USA for the World Port Tournament.Website:http://www.worldporttournament.nl

2.5, The NPB trend I was referring to was regarding top young junior high talent going to Japan recently with Chung-Shou Yang - who many would argue is the top young hitting prospect from Taiwan and Yi-Hao Lin - one of the best young arms (for his age) we've seen in quite some time. Based on potential and tools, I'd put Yang and Lin up there with Tsao, Kuo, CF Chen when they were that age. It gives the NPB first dibs on some of the most talented amateur talent available. I agree with you that basketball has def. superceeded baseball in popularity among the kids of today. The NBA does a great job marketing in Taiwan and it's a spectator friendly sport. I wish the kids of today would just compare the career paths of Hsin-An Chen and Chien-Ming Wang to see which sport has the brightest future in store for them. However, I don't blame the kids as I personally preferred to play basketball over baseball as well. Too bad we don't see any 2-sport HS athletes like we do here in the US.

thats sad, since Taiwan has traditionally been a baseball country. Our kids are more likely to be able to make it somewhere with baseball than b-ball. Hopefully, more Taiwanese players like Wang Chien Ming will do good in the MLB and baseball will catch on more with the younger generation.